Rising Up In the Streets: Rally Against Family Separation and Detention

FEATURING VARIOUS ACTIVISTS – President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order ending the practice of separating undocumented children from their parents – a policy that he used his executive authority to informally begin and then formally adopt. After days of falsely accusing the Democratic Party for the actions he chose to take, Trump signed the bill stopping his own Administration’s actions.

But critics immediately denounced the order as not much of an improvement given that Trump has now formally adopted the policy of detaining families indefinitely as if the only two options were to hold parents separately or hold parents with their children. As immigration violations are misdemeanors there is no requirement for the government to criminally prosecute all violators. But Trump’s hardline, zero-tolerance approach to immigration frames criminalization as necessary.

On Thursday morning over a hundred activists including union leaders and clergy gathered in downtown Los Angeles in front of the Federal Building and ICE office demanding an end to both family separation and detention. I spoke with several people who were gathered there as part of our on-going series Rising Up in the streets.